Russians, Ukrainians (And Some Others) Fight to Rescue Cats in New York

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Are You Prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse?

Zombies have been on my mind lately partly because I’m enjoying “The Last of Us,” the fungus-pandemic horror series on HBO, and partly because of something that showed up in my inbox. Many data tidbits are pushed to me, so they don’t always stop me in my scrolling tracks. But this one did just that. Did you know that more than one in 10 Americans think a zombie apocalypse is inevitable? Among the believers, more than half apparently believe it’s coming in the next 30 years.

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Sharing the Love, or Stealing?

Say you have a friend named Monique who’s lost her job. You know she can barely scrape together enough change to pay the rent, and she really needs some positive distraction. You give her the passcode to your Netflix account so she can get some laughs out of “The Extraordinary Attorney Woo.” Heck, you’ve already given the code to some of your other friends, who have in turn shared their Apple TV+ and HBOMax account codes with you.

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Will The Truth Set Us Free In These Polarized Times?

Deep in the heart of Becky Chambers’ award-winning “Wayfarers” sci-fi novel trilogy there’s mention of a show that changed the course of relations between regular humans and some sentient beings on another planet. At first, any meaningful friendship between the two types of “creatures” was impossible. They kept their distance. But then they started to reach the middle ground after some entertaining content emerged in which an alien and a human became friends. It grew wildly popular, and after 10 years, the two civilizations warmed to each other, turning the course of history.

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Why They Die — Mastering the Art of Killing Off Characters in Fiction

“He’s scared to look at me in the eyes and start to understand what’s about to happen to him. You know, he picked the wrong family. We’re not scared of conflict. We’re not running. We’re coming at him.”

Those are the words of Steve Goncalves, speaking to CNN’s Jim Sciutto about the alleged murderer of four University of Idaho students. Among them was Gonclaves’ daughter, Kaylee.

This recent example of senseless violence is horrifying, and it’s so easy to get behind Goncalves’ rage and overpowering need for justice. And at the same time, we can be haunted by other forms of death, which might seem quiet by comparison but are devastating.

Read More on Medium

Love and Caring in a World of Senseless Tragedies

In early November I was hit by a car. At the time, I was walking down a residential street in the early evening, wearing an orange jacket and crossing a well-lit intersection. I was thrown onto the entrance ramp of a highway running down the side of the Hudson River, from The Bronx into Manhattan.

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California Romance and Culinary Delights — The Making of ‘Casserole Courtship’

What do you get when you marry up one of California’s gorgeous Central Coast beaches with scrumptious food and romance? In the hands of Elizabeth Guider, those elements have become a page-turner novel called “The Casserole Courtship.” Her seasoned, realistic approach to fiction explores how some pretty fascinating people find love — or not.

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Elves and Magpies: The Mysterious Ways Writers Tap Into Rich Veins of Inspiration

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pods of people who support and sustain our lives. Pods of family members, pods of friends, and (in my case) pods of people who are obsessed with writing fiction. The writer group is made up of people that I know personally and others whose work I admire and who give me a greater understanding of the craft.

I turned to the writer pod recently to gather some thoughts about an enigma when it comes to fiction. It involves a question that writers get asked all the time but many of us find it hard to answer: Where do you get your ideas?

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The Comparison Trap: How to Get Back on Track When Others Succeed

There once was a belly dancer named Carmen. She wowed crowds from Coney Island to Cairo. Really hot men dropped at her feet when she did the Turkish Figure Eight. They didn’t call her Magic Hips for nothin’. Another dancer named Stardust won the International Belly Dance Championship, and Carmen was back a ways in the rankings. She just couldn’t curb her sense of despair and jealousy. She felt like calling the whole shimmy-thing off. Maybe she should just become a bookkeeper for her shady uncle’s dump truck biz like he always wanted.

My fictional Carmen just danced into a very particular circle of hell: comparing herself to someone with similar aspirations who scored a coveted victory.

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‘Where Then Is Paradise?’ — Reflections on Asteroids, Putin, Scarcity, and Love

You may have heard the news that scientists uncovered new understandings about the asteroid that hit planet Earth 66 million years ago, destroying three-quarters of all plant and animal species, including dinosaurs.

Two researchers from the University of Michigan initially reported the findings in NGU Advances. And a later report in The Washington Postdescribed the asteroid this way: “The researchers drew on previous research and assumed the meteor had a diameter of 8.7 miles and a density of about 165 pounds per cubic foot — roughly the weight of an average adult male crammed within a volume the size of a milk crate.”

Read More on Medium

Russians, Ukrainians (And Some Others) Fight to Rescue Cats in New York

Read More on Medium

Are You Prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse?

Zombies have been on my mind lately partly because I’m enjoying “The Last of Us,” the fungus-pandemic horror series on HBO, and partly because of something that showed up in my inbox. Many data tidbits are pushed to me, so they don’t always stop me in my scrolling tracks. But this one did just that. Did you know that more than one in 10 Americans think a zombie apocalypse is inevitable? Among the believers, more than half apparently believe it’s coming in the next 30 years.

Read More on Medium

Sharing the Love, or Stealing?

Say you have a friend named Monique who’s lost her job. You know she can barely scrape together enough change to pay the rent, and she really needs some positive distraction. You give her the passcode to your Netflix account so she can get some laughs out of “The Extraordinary Attorney Woo.” Heck, you’ve already given the code to some of your other friends, who have in turn shared their Apple TV+ and HBOMax account codes with you.

Read More on Medium

Will The Truth Set Us Free In These Polarized Times?

Deep in the heart of Becky Chambers’ award-winning “Wayfarers” sci-fi novel trilogy there’s mention of a show that changed the course of relations between regular humans and some sentient beings on another planet. At first, any meaningful friendship between the two types of “creatures” was impossible. They kept their distance. But then they started to reach the middle ground after some entertaining content emerged in which an alien and a human became friends. It grew wildly popular, and after 10 years, the two civilizations warmed to each other, turning the course of history.

Read More on Medium

Why They Die — Mastering the Art of Killing Off Characters in Fiction

“He’s scared to look at me in the eyes and start to understand what’s about to happen to him. You know, he picked the wrong family. We’re not scared of conflict. We’re not running. We’re coming at him.”

Those are the words of Steve Goncalves, speaking to CNN’s Jim Sciutto about the alleged murderer of four University of Idaho students. Among them was Gonclaves’ daughter, Kaylee.

This recent example of senseless violence is horrifying, and it’s so easy to get behind Goncalves’ rage and overpowering need for justice. And at the same time, we can be haunted by other forms of death, which might seem quiet by comparison but are devastating.

Read More on Medium

Love and Caring in a World of Senseless Tragedies

In early November I was hit by a car. At the time, I was walking down a residential street in the early evening, wearing an orange jacket and crossing a well-lit intersection. I was thrown onto the entrance ramp of a highway running down the side of the Hudson River, from The Bronx into Manhattan.

Read More on Medium

California Romance and Culinary Delights — The Making of ‘Casserole Courtship’

What do you get when you marry up one of California’s gorgeous Central Coast beaches with scrumptious food and romance? In the hands of Elizabeth Guider, those elements have become a page-turner novel called “The Casserole Courtship.” Her seasoned, realistic approach to fiction explores how some pretty fascinating people find love — or not.

Read More on Medium

Elves and Magpies: The Mysterious Ways Writers Tap Into Rich Veins of Inspiration

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pods of people who support and sustain our lives. Pods of family members, pods of friends, and (in my case) pods of people who are obsessed with writing fiction. The writer group is made up of people that I know personally and others whose work I admire and who give me a greater understanding of the craft.

I turned to the writer pod recently to gather some thoughts about an enigma when it comes to fiction. It involves a question that writers get asked all the time but many of us find it hard to answer: Where do you get your ideas?

Read More on Medium

The Comparison Trap: How to Get Back on Track When Others Succeed

There once was a belly dancer named Carmen. She wowed crowds from Coney Island to Cairo. Really hot men dropped at her feet when she did the Turkish Figure Eight. They didn’t call her Magic Hips for nothin’. Another dancer named Stardust won the International Belly Dance Championship, and Carmen was back a ways in the rankings. She just couldn’t curb her sense of despair and jealousy. She felt like calling the whole shimmy-thing off. Maybe she should just become a bookkeeper for her shady uncle’s dump truck biz like he always wanted.

My fictional Carmen just danced into a very particular circle of hell: comparing herself to someone with similar aspirations who scored a coveted victory.

Read More on Medium

‘Where Then Is Paradise?’ — Reflections on Asteroids, Putin, Scarcity, and Love

You may have heard the news that scientists uncovered new understandings about the asteroid that hit planet Earth 66 million years ago, destroying three-quarters of all plant and animal species, including dinosaurs.

Two researchers from the University of Michigan initially reported the findings in NGU Advances. And a later report in The Washington Postdescribed the asteroid this way: “The researchers drew on previous research and assumed the meteor had a diameter of 8.7 miles and a density of about 165 pounds per cubic foot — roughly the weight of an average adult male crammed within a volume the size of a milk crate.”

Read More on Medium

The Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novels to Escape This Crazy World

By Janet Stilson / January 12, 2021 /

When life around you turns into a hot mess, it’s a great time to dive into a really absorbing novel. At least, I’m escaping into storyland with even more abandon than usual these days. It seems like a good time to tell you about a handful of sci-fi and fantasy novels that I love. The…

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The Big Man, and the Stuff of Dreams

By Janet Stilson / January 5, 2021 /

A BAND IS A DREAM, YOU KNOW. IT’S A DREAM THAT YOU HAVE. IT’S A DREAM THAT ALL YOUR BAND MEMBERS HAVE. IT’S A DREAM OF ANOTHER WORLD, OF SOME OTHER PLACE, A PLACE THAT FEELS ADVENTUROUS, I SUPPOSE, SAFE—WHERE YOU FEEL YOU’RE ACCEPTED. AND A REAL BAND IS A VERY PARTICULAR AND SPECIAL THING.…

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A Recipe From Gram: Don’t Sit on the Damned Divan

By Janet Stilson / December 29, 2020 /

Hey. You. This is Gram Melada. I’m one of the people in that Janet Stilson book where my gran’chile Luscious played a starring role. It’s called THE JUICE. You’ll find stuff about me scattered all through the story. When I read it, I was spitting tacks at Luscious for telling the whole worl’ that I…

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The Tough Stuff That Good Journalists Are Made Of

By Janet Stilson / December 22, 2020 /

Deep in the heart of my new novel, THE JUICE, there’s a character that’s especially dear to my heart named Ginseng Childe. She’s a journalist who’s won a Pulitzer Prize. But despite that success, it’s become more difficult for her and other journalists to expose what’s really going on in the world. And she’s gone…

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My Favorite Shows on TV Right Now

By Janet Stilson / December 9, 2020 /

As we hunker down in our homes, defying COVID-19’s malicious march as best as we can, it seems like there’s never been a better time to escape into shows that transport us into different worlds. With that in mind, in this post and next week’s I’m sharing a personal Top 12 list of scripted shows…

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My Favorite Shows on TV Right Now – Part 2

By Janet Stilson / December 7, 2020 /

When last we left off, I shared six shows on TV that I especially enjoyed. Below are six more — none of which have anything to do with Christmas. So if you’re looking for seasonal joy, this ain’t the place. There’s no way that this is a definitive list of the very best shows available,…

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Who Gets You All Fired Up?

By Janet Stilson / December 1, 2020 /

Who was it that kindled your passion for a certain life-long pursuit? Who made you long to bake pie crusts so light they could fly up to heaven? Who was it that gave you a fascination for numbers, and eventually drove you to become a teacher, or a financial executive? Who made you fall in…

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